so what would be the spec for handling ~user?

As Tomi pointed out ~foo will point to different folders if set by user 'foo' or by user 'bar'.

To what folder should it point and where do I get this information?

David Edmondson <dme@dme.org> schrieb am Di., 10. Mai 2016 um 10:22 Uhr:

On Mon, May 09 2016, Bijan Chokoufe Nejad wrote:

>> ~user is ~ in case you're 'user' -- except that now that I think of it
>> ~user could read home directory from /etc/passwd and not using $HOME.
>> If you're 'eve', then ~alice should definitely be different than ~
>
> OK I see. I never used ~user instead of ~ and don't see any advantage in using
> ~user but good to know it's there.

A solution that supports ~ but not ~user seems incomplete.